My friend Ryan Bradford was fired from the Post Office for alluding to a small mailing list he maintained entitled, “Slave Labor Makes You Look Great.” The line made it into an interview with San Diego’s CityBeat after his photos of malicious dogs went internet big.
Sadly, Bradford didn’t win out and was recently handed his “Letter of Resignation.” So now, he’s unveiling the original zine:
Feb 23 – Pat, a regular, asks if I carried his route. I say yes and then he tells me all the things that I did wrong. Matt always seems irked. My poor job of his route does not suit him. “You see,” he says, “you don’t put ANY mail in the boxes labeled VACANT. And when you deliver the advos, do it like this.” He pantomimes folding paper. “Because when I’m out there, I like to jam.” He actually says this.
March 3 – Two girls holler “sexy mailman!” at me from a McDonald’s drive-thru. Makes/ruins my day.
I was lucky enough to be on the original list. His writing is captivating, endearing, and honest. Like Cometbus at its best.
peopletalkingonbananas
night shot behind porter/kresge at ucsc. (Submitted by crashingg)
Superboy’s nose is super-hard (via)
23 Hours left to get in on the ground floor
A very good friend of mine is getting funded through Kickstarter, an awesome site if you’re not familiar. There’s twenty three hours left to help them get funded.
Kickstarter - EDGEWATER - A dark and sexy comic book by Ryan and Zandria.
GUESTBREAKER: You’re a DJ
Playing records really isn’t that hard, so, while I think it’s cute that you’ve found a creative outlet to assuage your trust-fund boredom, stop pretending to be a musician. Drums, guitar, trumpet, clarinet - those all take practice. DJing doesn’t, no matter how super-serious you look when you’re “matching beats.” Stop talking about how you’re “over Justice”, “weak-ass beats,” or how “Italians were doing it better 20 years ago.” The only differences between you and my ipod shuffle-function is that the ipod will play what I want to hear AND it doesn’t have an annoying coke-habit.
A Guest Dealbreaker written by Ryan.
GUESTBREAKER: Your Goddamn Bob Marley Poster
Look at that thing. Go back a couple decades and it might signify your support of universal love and civil disobedience, but you know what I see now? A girl who fucking. loves. weed. A girl whose musical taste is so undeveloped and weed-assisted that she becomes startled when there’s not only variation in music, but when songs end in under 15 minutes. I know it’s hard to get a “solid groove” on during a three-minute song, but one less toke out of your buddy Nosh’s totes awes gravity bong might improve your attention span.
Oh and you probably don’t shave your pits either.A Guest Dealbreaker written by Ryan.
We Listen to Metal
The man responsible for my father’s death orders our special: gazpacho. It’s fitting.
Something about serving it cold.
He doesn’t even recognize me, doesn’t even look at me when he hands the menu back. Probably just an ass in black pants when I walk away.
And as I plan my revenge, it occurs to me that I haven’t seen Mr. Golding in eight years. No wonder he doesn’t recognize me.
The gazpacho cools in the large walk-in freezer. I close the door behind me and watch my breath dissipate in the cold stillness.
****
It’s eight years earlier and I’m a teenager living in Brooklyn. My dad owns a house in Bed-Stuy, a neighborhood that can be nice or dangerous to a girl like me after dark. The house is cheap and also dangerous, but it’s ours. His, really. Dad reminds me of this regularly.
At night, I lay awake and listen to the rats scurry in the walls. In the day, my dad tells me that one day, this will all be mine.
“Kristin,” he says, “One day this will all be yours.” Then he pops some painkillers and becomes useless for the rest of the day.
****
The other girls at school don’t get along with me. I think it’s because of my boyfriend, Ty. Everyone likes Ty, but he likes white girls. For this, the other girls aren’t nice to me. Just flash their thongs and cleavage when we’re both looking and call me bitch when he’s not. White bitch. I don’t go to school very much.
I hang out in Sunset Park in the day and watch the Manhattan skyline and wish for destruction because I missed it the first time. It seems that would make my life insignificant.
Sometimes Ty comes with. Sometimes we make out when the sun goes down. Mostly, I go there alone.
****
My dad comments on our neighbor who needs to use the buses since his car broke down. “Lazy, lazy, lazy,” he says. He’s not talking only about our neighbor. I remind that he doesn’t have a job and he says it’s different for him. He gets workman’s comp from being injured on the job.
A settlement for his hard labor bought our house. The house that will be mine one day. He always reminds me and I always look at the peeling paint and the buckets that catch the leaking water when it rains.
****
On the weekends, Ty takes me into Manhattan and we see movies. Afterwards, we hang in Union Square to watch the skater boys. The kids pass around brown-bag whiskey and a few gulps make us feel hilarious. Ty likes to talk about heavy metal; the other kids are pleasantly surprised.
We stay out late and watch people stumble out of bars: young professionals vomiting on the sidewalk, crying women, and couples whose first dates have passed the initial awkwardness into drunken groping.
We go to sleep on the train going home and end up in Far Rockaway and think let’s watch the sun rise over the ocean. Why not.
****
Sometimes my dad asks me where I’ve been all night. Most often, though, he doesn’t.
Ty walks me home at night after hanging out at his mom’s house. His mom makes me dinner and I watch him study for the class I probably won’t go to the next day.
We walk in silence, listening to the music that floats out of people’s homes into the balmy night.
We get to my house and a bleeding junkie sits on my lawn. I tell him that he has to fuck off and he asks if I have a Band-Aid. The wound is somewhere on his head and the blood glistens in his hair. Again, I tell him to get the hell out before I call the police. The junkie stands up and asks if I got a fix and Ty makes like he’s going to punch the dude. Before running off into the night, the junkie tells me that my home is a shithole. The fucking, bleeding junkie.
Ty holds me as I cry on the front porch of the shithole that will be mine one day.
****
My lucid dad tells me to come meet Mr. Golding, who he calls his “financial associate.” Mr. Evens frowns at this title and looks uncomfortable when I stick around. The room is thick with tension so I say nice to meet you and leave.
I hear a muffled argument through our dilapidated walls and then Mr. Golding leaves. My dad slams the door behind him.
“Fucking cocksucker!” he yells. Asshole. Shithead. Fucking Jew. These are the things dad yells. I tell him to calm down and he says shut up. Says I wouldn’t understand.
Fifteen minutes later, he’s useless again. Tears linger on his cheeks in the splintering TV light.
****
I invite Ty over when my dad passes out and we tip toe as to not wake him up. We go into my room and put the radio on. Some metal station. He takes off my clothes and I do the same to him. We make out and rub against each other to metal.
When we are finished, his skin is cool with sweat and I ask him if he wants to see something. He says of course and I bounce across the room in my bra and panties. There is an orange bottle in my desk and he takes his focus off my body when I hand it to him. It’s my dad’s, I tell him. He won’t notice. He has so many.
We each swallow two pills and let the world swim around. The bed is nice, his skin is nice and we just lie there. Listening to the cars, radio and sometimes gunshots.
Ty leaves in the morning before me or my dad wake up.
****
Bills pile up on our fridge. After a couple weeks, my dad stops opening them. Weeks after that, he just tears them up.
The next time Mr. Golding comes around, my dad makes me tell him that he’s not there. I tell Mr. Golding that my dad’s running errands. He looks and sees my dad’s car parked in front of our house.
He nods and leaves. But not without giving me a look of unmistakable pity.
****
Ty comes over and makes dinner with me. I’m a little embarrassed that all we have is macaroni, but he insists that he’s a fan.
My dad wakes up and decides that he wants to help, but he just sort of stands around. He says “sup brotha” and forces and awkward fist bump on Ty.
Muted from painkillers, my dad eats most of the dinner and talks about the rats he sees in the hallway. He tells Ty to treat me right and that he “don’t want no drama with a baby mama.” He laughs at this. Ty pretends to. I don’t.
When the food is gone, Ty leaves without kissing or hugging me. My dad remarks how well-behaved he is for a “negro” boy and I’ve never wanted to burn this shithole down more in my life.
****
I come home from Coney Island to find an eviction notice on our front door. I show my dad and yell at him. I tell him that he’s nothing to look up to. That he’s a crippled junkie. That his house is fucked up and I don’t want any part of it.
He looks at me with cloudy eyes and calls me a spoiled bitch.
****
Ty doesn’t return my phone calls after that dinner at my house. The next time I see him, it’s in Union Square. He’s with a new girl. A black girl. He pretends to not see me.
****
That fall, my dad kills himself with his pills. He dies on the chair in front of the TV. Clear liquid comes out of his mouth, and I conclude that I did love him afterall. The mailbox is full of overdue mortgage bills and he leaves me a suicide-note saying that the house isn’t really mine. Underneath there is a phone number for Mr. Golding, but I don’t take it down. I pack my clothes, everything I need and leave forever.
I find a pay phone and make an anonymous phone call to 911.It’s the last time I sit in Sunset Park.
I pray that it rains airplanes.
****
It’s eight years later and Mr. Golding, the man who I’m convinced murdered my father, sits at one of my tables, slurping his fucking gazpacho. There’s no poison in it, no hidden shards to cut up his throat and heart. It’s just a little old. That’s it.
When I ask how everything was, he says okay and looks up at me. His tense face softens up and that look returns. Pity.
He murmurs something, his death rattle before I jam this knife into his eye, but not really.
He murmurs: “No, it was really good.”
And the fucker leaves a 30% tip.
